Again, not feeling interesting today, so I’ll just parrot the national blogs because this needs to be repeated: Here’s Colin Powell on Meet the Press today:
Guantanamo has become a major, major problem for America?s perception as it?s seen, the way the world perceives America. And if it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo not tomorrow, but this afternoon. I?d close it. And I would not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, ?Well, then they?ll have access to lawyers, then they?ll have access to writs of habeas corpus.? So what? Let them. Isn?t that what our system?s all about? And, by the way, America, unfortunately, has two million people in jail all of whom had lawyers and access to writs of habeas corpus. And so we can handle bad people in our system. And so I would get rid of Guantanamo and I?d get rid of the military commission system and use established procedures in federal law or in the manual for courts-martial. I would do that because I think it?s a more equitable way to do it and it?s more understandable in constitutional terms. I would always?I would also do it because every morning I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds. And so, essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America?s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don?t need it, and it?s causing us far damage than any good we get for it. But, remember what I started in this discussion saying, ?Don?t let any of them go.? Put them into a different system, a system that is experienced, that knows how to handle people like this.
Of course, doing the sensible thing is beyond the stuff of the small minds and hearts of the men currently in power. So pleased with their own power, and so fearful of the rule of law which inhibits them, they purposely whip up hysteria to bolster their own power — and become captive to it themselves.
Guantanamo is a sign of weakness and cowardice; I look forward to more leaders saying so loudly.
Powell can still disappoint. Don’t get me wrong. I agree that it is important to get as many people as possible calling for the closure of Guantanamo. But it is disappointing that his reasoning is based on how it make the US look to outsiders, not on the utter brutality and injustice of the system that Guantanamo is part of. Maybe I’m being too hard on the guy, who may be just trying another tact with the part of the American public that doesn’t care about justice. But wouldn’t it be nice for one highly placed figure in the administration, even if one who retired in disgrace several years ago, to make a clear call for ethics and justice being dandy reasons for change all by themselves? But no, it’s more important what the Joneses think.
It’s very easy to criticize Colin Powell’s performance in the Bush Administration. He chose to be a good soldier rather than a good citizen, and in doing so failed to try to stop a war that he knew was a really bad idea.
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Obviously I don’t really know the guy, but I really think Colin Powell is/was an earnest person. I think his comment “Isn’t that what our system’s all about?” pretty much covers him on the rightness/wrongness issue of Guantanamo.
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I feel bad for Colin Powell. He made his own bed, of course, but he still strikes me as a stand-up, earnest person (as much as is possible with a national political figure) who fell in with the wrong crowd. A tragedy for him and the rest of us.